Over the next couple of weeks, PowerMizzou.com will speak with every Tiger basketball player who is currently on campus. Today, our chat with junior guard Marcus Denmon.

PowerMizzou.com: First couple of years you've been here, the leaders have been pretty apparent. Are you and Kimmie really trying to take over now with just one senior as far as leadership goes?

Marcus Denmon: "Yeah, definitely. Me and Kimmie are gonna be a couple of the guys looked upon as team leaders. We've been here, we've done been through the fire, we've been a couple of the premier guys playing. I mean, taking on that leadership role is going to be a big test this year. We've got a lot of young guys. We're going to try to get those guys going in the right direction and hopefully our team will have a good season."

PM: With J.T. and Zaire gone and you stepping into one of those roles, tell me something you take from playing with each of those guys the last couple of years.

MD: "Just the way they come out and get after people each and every day doing those blue-collar things. Whether it's playing defense on the best scorer, getting the little scrappy buckets, scrappy rebounds. Both of those guys had that blue-collar mentality and guys like me and Kimmie, being the leading scorers last year, we want to try to take some of those characteristics and use those this year, some of the things we learned from those guys, to help us become better players."

PM: You've been back a couple weeks now. Just playing with the guys is there anybody that's made you think, that guy's a lot better player than he was a couple of months ago?

MD: "I probably would say, it's been a lot of people that have been working on a lot of things. Myself, Mike have been working hard, Kimmie, but I probably would have to say John (Underwood) and Steve (Moore). John has gained so much weight and become so much stronger physically inside. He now is able to help us when last year he really wasn't in as good of shape to help us. We got the best out of him we could, but this year, I feel he'll be able to help us a lot more and so will Steve Moore."